


You're a shark and I'm swimming

by Luthor



Category: Life Is Strange (Video Game), Love is Strange - Fandom
Genre: F/F, Modern AU, No Time Travel AU, No one dies AU, OOC Nathan Prescott
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-16
Updated: 2017-09-28
Packaged: 2018-10-06 08:19:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 12,628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10330259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Luthor/pseuds/Luthor
Summary: Chasefield AU: Max wakes up in bed with Victoria Chase, and Victoria is... really over that.'“So,” Max tries again. “This is the part where you say this isn’t what it looks like, and we pretend this never happened.”'





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't played LiS since around the time I graduated from uni, but here it comes, just before Andromeda's release, pulling me into a multi-chapter... It's fine. 
> 
> I'm in the process of replaying (I love Crying and Being Sad) but I haven't touched this universe in over a year, so expect canon inconsistencies. I mean, expect them anyway, because AU. But expect *more*. 
> 
> (Title credit to alt-J because I loved them before I even played this game. Posers.)

Victoria wakes like a flower blooms in old school slow motion film.

 

She can see it as though she’s floating six feet above herself – soft lighting, black and white, grainy like the sunshine in home movies. Dust particles caught in the wake of a movement, reflecting the light like shards of glass.

 

She’s glowing.

 

Her body feels weightless, not there, like the memory of having one at some point but having since lost the restrictions. She’s slow in returning to herself.

 

Her bed is soft and over-warm in a way that she’s learned to appreciate at this improbable time of morning. She stretches, fills back into the shape of herself, to the tips of her toes to the unnatural backwards bend of her spine, and then relaxes. She’s the kind of limp that usually comes after an intense workout, her limbs stretched and burning, but not too intense as to have left lactic acid strewn around like leftover greasy pizza boxes.  

 

Last night had been… something else.

 

Her body sings with the memory, buzzes, aches – she presses her thighs together and sighs, wets her lips. She’s never been so… in touch with herself? With another person, definitely. Her body, her mind, had reached a spiritual plateau somewhere between I Saw God Last Night, and _Fuck, Yes, Put Your Tongue in My Cunt! Don’t Stop, Harder—Right There!_

 

An involuntary shiver raises gooseflesh across her back and chest. She splays her own palms flat beneath her shirt and feels herself expand and deflate as she takes a large breath in, sighs it back out again. She’s never even made _herself_ come that many times in one go before, and that’s… She can be _persistent_. Determined. Hedonistic, to say the least.

 

She opens her eyes and the world rematerializes as though it had been waiting for her.

 

She’d drank a lot last night, and her thoughts are soft and free with the remnants of alcohol, fluid in a way that they’re rarely allowed to be, but for that special time between waking and awareness. She turns onto one side, into the source of heat that she’d woken with, and closes her eyes as though to fall back into sleep before she registers the image that she’s seeing.

 

Or, unseeing, for several seconds.

 

That’s… impossible?

 

She closes her eyes, reopens, blinks again – harder.

 

All those sweet thoughts melt on her tongue like candyfloss.

 

“Hi,” Max croaks, and regrets it. She tries a sheepish smile out for size, but mainly looks as though she’s tasting something awful. Victoria, recalling what she’d been drinking the night before, bets that's not far from the truth. Her own mouth tastes like ass.

 

(She _really_ hopes that’s not… actually the case?)

 

“So,” Max tries again. “This is the part where you say this isn’t what it looks like, and we pretend this never happened.”

 

And Victoria would love to, really.

 

But Max _fucking_ Caulfield gave her multiple orgasms last night.

 

“What the _fuck_.”

 

 

Max doesn’t try again after that – figures, most likely, that this is something Victoria is going to have to process on her own, and while she’s doing it, maybe roll off her arm because Max is really starting to miss the feeling in her hand. She tries to subtly clear her throat and tug on her arm, but Victoria is too busy hiding her eyes behind her fingers.

 

Perfectly functioning fingers, Max bets, without a hint of pins and needles.

 

She waits a moment longer, holding her breath.

 

“Victoria—”

 

“Don’t,” Victoria says, muffled against her palms. “Just let me think.”

 

“Um, sure. Okay.”

 

The bed is comfortable and warm, and makes waiting easier, Max thinks. She relaxes back into the mattress and cranes her neck back, studying Victoria’s ceiling and the play of sunlight filtering in from the window behind her head. She should probably be more freaked out than this, waking up in the situation she’s in, and yet.

 

Some vague impression of a heroine in an action movie stretches lazily across her thoughts like a cat in the sun. She’s in that moment of the film where the protagonist stares down the barrel of her own impending death, unshaking. Smiling, if she were braver. The inevitability of the outcome materialises with one solid truth; she’s already dead, she can’t fight it and so she shouldn’t try.

 

Having skipped the previous four stages of grief, Max settles into Acceptance with a sigh and an ear out to the bird chatter through the closed window.

 

(She’s really gonna die before she platinums Skyrim? Lame.)

 

During this, Victoria returns to herself again.

 

She sits up, finally, as though it’ll give her a new perspective on the situation.

 

(Feeling returns to Max’s arm in fits and starts, and then… _knives and bricks and fucking ouch!_ )

 

Instead, Victoria’s dishevelling of the blankets reveals a slip of soft, freckled skin, followed by a sprinkling of memories that make her neck sweat, and that’s… holy shit, not exactly what she was going for. She turns away, and Max watches her, cradling her arm to her chest, waiting.

 

Victoria’s still wearing last night’s make-up, although not with the intended effect. Mascara is smudged beneath her eyes, and her foundation has been imprinted by a crease of her pillow. Even her hair has mussed, although barely enough that Max (having embraced a pixie cut when she turned sixteen) can’t help but wonder how much hairspray she laced it with the night before.

 

The overall picture is surreal; Max reaches for her camera on instinct, and then remembers that it’s not placed by her bed, like usual.

 

She’s up now, though, and tucks the blankets to her chest as she raises the rest of the way. She and Victoria sit side by side, their knees pressing together. The mattress doesn’t allow either much space, and that over-warm feeling that Victoria had felt earlier is now a burning pink in her cheeks. How fucking stupid…

 

She presses a hand to her bedhead and wills the headache away.

 

Think rationally, she tells herself. She’s good at that, usually. Her first concern swims to the surface of her thoughts, gasping for breath, and some of that deep-set mortification lessens in the wake of building panic.

 

“Was that your first time?”

 

She turns to Max the way Max expects someone about to mug her would, and she flinches back.

 

“What?” she asks too loudly, and tries out a laugh that struggles and loses itself somewhere in her throat.

 

Victoria sighs, her worry ebbing away to allow her resting bitch face to surface, on cue. (A bite of guilt gnaws at her, faint enough to pretend she’d never felt it in the first place. Huh.)

 

“Good.”

 

Max scoffs but doesn’t try to argue. But then—

 

“Why? Are you _into_ that?”

 

Her own scandalised expression mirrors Victoria’s for half a second, before she’s elbowed in the arm.

 

“Ew, shut up. No.” Victoria lifts a hand to mess with her hair. She makes it look worse than it had before. “It just means I’m less likely to have caught something from you.”

 

Max scoffs again, outraged, but Victoria’s expression turns lax, distant, lost in thought.

 

(Her first time had been nothing short of disappointing, but _of course_ Max’s would be such a success. She turns to her, glaring. Y _ou’re fucking welcome, Caulfield_.)

 

“Wait.” Max sits up a little straighter. “Do I have to be worried about that?”

 

Victoria releases a pained sigh.

 

“No,” she says. “You don’t.” As if? “But if you want the number of my gyno, or anything…”

 

That's probably too intimate. She realises halfway through, blushing. Max is blushing, too. 

 

"Never mind."

 

She turns away from Max and finds her attention on her bedroom floor, where her clothes are strewn. Her skirt and blouse are creased beneath Max’s jeans, and the set of her jaw only intensifies her growing headache. What the fuck was she drinking last night…

 

“I should get out of here,” Max says, but clings to the safety of the covers for a whole seven seconds before making an attempt to shift. She’s not the most graceful person when she’s in her element, but climbing butt-naked over Victoria Chase’s stiff sitting body brings her closer to death than she’s ever felt in all of her eighteen years.

 

She dresses quicker than she has in her life, and pretends not to notice how beet red in the face Victoria is when she turns back around.

 

“Uh… goodbye?”

 

“Get out,” Victoria sighs, rubbing her eyes, and Max nods her head as though to say _thank God_. “And don’t let anybody see you. I really don’t want to deal with this today.”

 

Max, unable to argue against that, reaches for the door.


	2. Chapter 2

Max loses momentum halfway through changing pants and checking her mail.

 

She’s sitting at her desk, half-dressed, when it dawns on her what happened last night.

 

Waking up in Victoria Chase’s bed had been… unsettling.

 

Watching Victoria wake up to dawning horror had been like the beginning of a headache, tender behind her eyes, a warning twinge that shit’s about to get a whole lot worse from here on out. The actual headache hadn’t helped, either, but aside from that and minor dehydration she’s holding up well enough.

 

Her body had defaulted to auto-pilot during the confusion, had taken her by the hand and led her gently out of the room on her Five Step Walk of Shame. Now, it seems to shove her back into herself and say, _good luck, bitch!_ with a cheery wave.

 

Memories from the night before seem improbable.

 

Had any of it actually happened, or had she just drank herself silly, been taken in by her charitable neighbour, and lent a bed to sleep on? …bare-ass naked?

 

(Honestly, if it was Chloe this had happened with, that could almost be plausible, but.)

 

(Her headache sharpens in warning, and Max forces herself to drop that line of thought in the hopes of appeasing the wrath of the Hangover Gods.)

 

The blank space in her mind doesn’t stay that way for long.

 

It’s not that Max really wants to know all the gory details of the entire Chase-Caulfield affair, but a few of them couldn’t hurt. They’re her memories – she should have them? It might help to know. The more she can retain from the night before, the better she can process, the easier it’ll be to forget that it ever happened.

 

So.

 

She begins with the party. Hosted by the Vortex Club, with some vague enough pretence of a cause that it eludes Max now. She shouldn’t have been there, probably. It would be so like her to have this entire mess come out of her bad karma.

 

She’d taken a time out after her third or fourth drink, slipped through the front door, and followed the shadow of a squirrel to the base of a tree, all before she’d spotted the hunched figure on a bench.

 

What happened from there is a blur of wishful thinking, followed by a tangle of memories that reminds her of the too-long sex montages in French films. Max can recall the vagaries of tongues and teeth, of soft fingers pressing, pulling, teasing her body apart and then building her back up, up…

 

(With startling clarity, she remembers Victoria grasping for both of her hands as she reached climax, her back arched and her breasts bare and pale in the faint light escaping her curtains.)

 

Twenty seconds later, Max zones back in again.

 

Yep, she thinks, another terrible idea by yours truly.

 

A noise from her laptop turns her attention from her thoughts, and they’re easy enough to forget about when that’s exactly what she wants to do right now. She’s expecting a new message, perhaps from Victoria herself, blunt and paranoid and terrifying. Instead— Origin has finished an update.

 

Oh. Well.

 

It’s only fair that the rest of her weekend isn’t nearly as exciting as her Friday night had been, huh?

 

 

 

 

 

Victoria lingers behind after her shower.

 

Her hair is wet and dripping down the back of her blouse, and she knows its going to leave an unsightly patch if she lets it go on any longer, but she can’t seem to stop staring at herself in the mirror. Really, it’s a burden.

 

Dark circles aside, there’s no remarkable change to her appearance, and even they’re easily concealed.

 

Her face looks like her own – the same brown eyes, furrowed brow, stare of death.

 

Inside, she feels as though her body was taken apart in the night and put back together again by somebody unfamiliar with the pieces of herself. It’s not that she feels— bad, per se. Disturbed, a little, and exhausted by her own poor choices. But the pain meds kicked in twenty minutes ago, and she actually feels good after eating, feels better.

 

Her eyes trace the outline of herself in the mirror – her cheeks, her lips, her exposed throat.

 

She’s burning, still, with the memory of Max’s mouth on her. That just can’t do. Meeting her gaze head on, sighs and forces her shoulders to relax.

 

“Oh, Victoria, you stupid slut…”

 

 

Taylor’s waiting when she finally exits the girls’ shower room, and stumbles to at least look like she was guarding the door, instead of playing whatever stupid interactive romance game that had her glued to her phone.

 

Victoria arches an unimpressed eyebrow.

 

“I’m getting dicked down by the God of the underworld, Victoria. I’m gonna have his babies.”

 

She pouts until Victoria relents, masking her smile behind an easy eyeroll.

 

No one had come into the bathroom, like she’d asked, and… those games were highly addictive. Although she’ll never quite understand how she managed to become best friends with somebody who would choose Hades over Medusa. Taylor was _so_ straight.

 

“Very happy for you, T.”

 

“So what’s with the whole…” Taylor jerks her head towards the door she’d just been guarding, and then leans conspiratorially closer. “Heavy flow day?”

 

“No,” Victoria scowls, and Taylor looks unconvinced. “I just wanted to wash my hair in peace without listening to some loser clean her vag in the stall next door. It’s a human rights violation that this many people are forced to share three fucking showers between them.”

 

“Amen, sista.”

 

Victoria is just about to tell her _don’t_ , but before she can get the word out, Kate Marsh emerges from her bedroom with a notebook in hand. When she meets Victoria’s gaze, she honest to God stops in her tracks. Her blush is furious and tongue-stopping, and Kate stutters for three seconds before she forces herself to turn towards Max’s door.

 

“What’s that about?” Taylor asks in her ear, but Victoria isn’t listening.

 

Kate doesn’t manage to knock.

 

She adjusts her hold on the notebook and lifts her hand as though she’s about to, but her gaze is dragged straight back to Victoria, and that blush isn’t going anywhere. With a sinking feeling, Victoria remembers every single complaint she’s spoken purposefully aloud about the Blackwell dorms’ paper-thin walls.

 

Oh, _fuck_.

 

But that isn’t enough of a damper on her morning, apparently, as Max chooses this precise moment to crawl out of her hole.

 

Except, it’s less of a crawl, and more of a narrowly escaped tumble straight into Kate. She holds her toothbrush up to protect herself before realising who it is she’d almost ploughed down, and whines out a sigh.

 

“Je—e— _cheese_ and rice, Kate! What are you—?”

 

She, too, notices Victoria and the look of abject horror on her face.

 

Max’s gaze swims back to Kate, putting the pieces together, and the colour drains out of her cheeks.

 

(Oh, hell no, she is not ready for this yet.)

 

“Max, I– I, um.” Kate stops and breathes, and looks like she might actually swear for a moment. Max thinks she’s about to do the same. “My book?” she tries, and Max nods her head, although she has no idea what she’s talking about. “I came to get my book – it’s, I lent it to you?”

 

Book?

 

“Oh,” Max says, and her heart starts beating again. “ _Oh_ , yeah! I have that right here, wait one sec…”

 

Kate steps from foot to foot and almost loses her balance.

 

When Max returns, the book is in her hands, and Kate takes it clumsily from her. “Thanks,” she says, and Max tries to laugh. The effect is a little more breathless than she’d like, and her mouth feels dry for trying. She swallows and wets her lips.

 

“No worries.” Her smile feels strained, too big. “Oh my clod, Kate, I almost ran you down there.”

 

“Sorry about that,” Kate says, and makes her escape with both books pressed to her chest. The way she walks past Victoria and Taylor is nothing short of a cat walking past what she perceives to be a threat, quickly, her back angled away, protecting her ass.

 

When she’s out of sight, Max realises she’s still being watched by Victoria, and a vaguely confused looking Taylor. She opens her mouth to say something – _good morning, nice to see you again, thanks for last night_ – but Victoria’s subtly shaking head stops her.

 

Fine. Probably for the best.

 

Awkwardly, she slips back inside her room and closes the door behind her, toothbrush gripped tightly in hand.

 

“O- _kay_ ,” Taylor stresses, turning to look from Max’s closed door, down to the way Kate had fled. “Now I know what you meant by losers and their vages. What was that even about?”

 

“I have no idea,” Victoria lies. “And I seriously don’t fucking care.”

 

If Kate Marsh wanted to spread self-righteous bullshit around Blackhell about her, then— oh, who was she kidding? That little nun probably got off on everything she overheard last night.

 

( _Earth to Vic, you’re being a dick_.)

 

She masks a sigh behind irritation. Alright, that was kind of uncalled for.

 

Kate wasn’t the type of person to spread rumours, no matter how scandalous they were.

 

 

 

 

Max tries not to leave her room, after that.

 

She manages to brush her teeth and squirrel away some snacks and a litre of coke, and uses the entire mess out in the corridor as an excuse to play video games all day. It’s only around sunset that Max’s ringing phone drags her away from her overheating laptop.

 

With a sinking feeling, she realises she’s had her phone on _do not disturb_ all day, and cringes when she sees Chloe’s name on her screen. Ah, shit.

 

“Hey, Chloe.”

 

“Hey, asshole, good to know you’re alive.”

 

“Yeah,” Max clears her throat. “Sorry, I haven’t looked at my phone all day. Is everything alright?”

 

Chloe gives a noncommittal hum, but doesn’t sound too upset. “Just checking in after you chose to attend a lame party last night instead of shooting aliens with me. I wanted to make sure the Vortex Club hadn’t _zombified_ you already. It’d suck so much ass to lose my best friend to designer cashmere and gateway drugs.”

 

“Jerk,” Max grins. “You’re the stoner.”

 

“Well, one of us has to be the fun mom to our lovechild, and you’re clearly so much better at rules and respect.”

 

No kidding.

 

“Our lovechild would be so cute,” Max says, zoning out for a second while she checks on her laptop. “Do you think of yourself as more of an _International Super Spy_ or a _Rockstar_?”

 

“Wait,” Chloe groans. “Have you started playing Sims again? God, no wonder you’ve been so fucking quiet today.” Max pouts to herself but unpauses time long enough to make sure sim-Victoria brushes her teeth before getting into bed for the night. “Seriously, have you left your room at all today?”

 

“It’s Saturday,” is all Max has in answer. “I think I’m done now, though. My Warren sim just died of starvation. Do you think it’s a sign?”

 

Chloe snorts over the line.

 

“Yeah, it’s a sign. That he’s hella suffering ‘cause you don’t want bofa.”

 

“What’s bofa?”

 

The resulting intake of breath is so sharp and pleased that Max has no doubt she’s just made a terrible mistake.


	3. Chapter 3

Blackwell’s cafeteria is a typical representation of your average food chain, and Victoria Chase is at the very top of it.

 

Except, today, when Taylor and Courtney decide they want McDonalds, and Victoria can’t bare the drive out of town to get her Big Mac on.

 

She finds Nathan out on the grass, instead, half-ignoring a hotdog while scrolling through his phone. Victoria sits down beside him and begins picking apart a blueberry muffin. Nathan turns to her as she pops a chunk past her lips, but ultimately returns to his scrolling.

 

Victoria peeks at his dashboard. Most it seems to be depressive text posts along with the odd BDSM porn gif. She rolls her eyes and turns away, uninterested.

 

“You’re radiating negative energy today,” Nathan mumbles, liking three more posts before the app crashes and he puts his phone away with a grumble. Victoria’s staring at him when he lifts his head. “And there’s the bitch face. What’s up with you?”

 

“Shut up, whore. The sun’s in my eyes.”

 

“Really? I thought that was just how your face looked.”

 

He laughs at Victoria’s furrowing brow, but there’s nothing playful about her reaction. Instead, she turns to watch the group of students milling around at the far end of the campus. There’s a minor commotion when Brooke’s drone narrowly avoids a head-on collision with a tree, but it happens too far away for them to really make out what’s said.

 

Nathan doesn’t miss the way Victoria singles out the group, expression souring.

 

He takes a too-large bite of his hotdog and tries to speak before he’s finished swallowing. “You heard from your parents?”

 

“No.”

 

Though, that’s usually the problem.

 

He’s about to press further, when Victoria sighs and meets his gaze. She leans in and glares at him, suddenly deadly fucking serious. “If you repeat this to anyone, I will flay you like a bitch, okay?” Well. That has his attention. He finishes swallowing and clears his throat, nods his head, waits. Victoria bites her bottom lip.

 

“I made… a serious mistake Friday night.”

 

Nathan waits for her to elaborate. When she doesn’t, he leans in to nudge her shoulder with his own. “You need help burying a body?”

 

“Not yet,” Victoria sighs. “And if this gets out, it’ll only be my reputation that takes a nose-dive off a cliff.”

 

“Yeah, you’ve gotta be more specific than that. What did you do?”

 

Victoria squirms on the spot and Nathan bites back his impatience. This is like pulling teeth.

 

“It’s not… exactly a _what_ ,” she says, her voice lowering. Her cheeks are already turning pink. “It’s more of a _who_.”

 

Nathan squints his eyes at her, and this is it, Victoria supposes. Now or never. She feels herself on the precipice of that metaphorical cliff edge, both hands on her reputation’s back, ready to shove. She turns until she finds who she’s looking for, although it doesn’t take long. She’s been struggling to keep her gaze off her all afternoon.

 

Jutting her chin forward, she represses a major face-palm when Nathan turns conspicuously, sitting up on his knees to better see.

 

At first, he misses her.

 

His gaze skims the group with the drone, and the tree that it had almost crashed into, and then… hiding almost entirely behind that tree, with only her legs and half of her body poking out, is Max Caulfield.

 

“Holy fucking shit.”

 

Victoria tries to elbow the grin off his face.

 

Nathan takes a double look, from Victoria’s furious (mortified) expression, and the tree that Max is leaning against as she writes in her diary. He laughs too loudly and, this time, Victoria succeeds in at least making him wince and drop his hotdog.

 

“Keep your voice down, oh my _god_ , Nathan. I ask you to be discreet about _one thing_.”

 

She grabs his arm, dragging him back down into a sitting position, and Nathan almost chokes in repressing his next howl of laughter. He turns to her, shit-eating grin and all, and Victoria releases him to hide behind the hand she uses to fix her bangs.

 

“I hate you,” she whispers, angling her body away.

 

“Don’t blame me ‘cause you’re gay for Caulfield.”

 

“ _Ugh_.”

 

“Oh my god, you’re gay for Caulfield.”

 

“Can you not say it so loudly?” She tries to steal another peek through her fingers. “Is she looking over here?”

 

Nathan laughs again, but he seems to have gotten it out of his system.

 

“This has made my day,” he croons, stretching both legs out and resting back on bended elbows. He watches Victoria until she finds the courage to meet his gaze, and gives a quick arch of his brow. She easily ignores him. “Well?”

 

“What?”

 

“Was she any good?”

 

Victoria makes another irritated noise. Boys, amirite?

 

“Actually,” she says, and there’s that _fuck you_ attitude he’s come to know and love. “She really was.”

 

Nathan takes a moment to process that. He looks genuinely surprised for the first time since Victoria opened her mouth about all of this, and she’s beginning to wonder exactly what impression her and Max's to-and-froing had given him. It’s not like they were friends, before. Or now, either. She could maybe settle on fuck buddies, if Max could repeat the performance. And if Max _were_ to ask her out, then…

 

Getting ahead of herself.

 

She blushes again.

 

She seriously fucking hates Nathan’s smile.

 

“So what are you gonna do?” he asks, and Victoria muses on that for a while, before deciding.

 

“What can I do?” She huffs and feigns a relaxed position until the colour in her cheeks recedes. “It was a mistake, I mean. You know how I get when I drink.” Nathan nods his head in sympathy. “She was just… _there_.”

 

“Yeah, and she’s put that look on your face,” Nathan points out, and Victoria really doesn’t want to know about this look. She doesn’t ask. She will not turn doe-eyed for Max fucking Caulfield, or anyone. She scowls harder as though to prove him wrong. “Plus, you probably popped her cherry, and you know how girls get after that.”

 

“Like you’ve slept with a single girl in your entire life,” Victoria snorts, and Nathan shrugs easily. Then she turns concerned. “I did, though. Do you think she’s, like, in love with me now?”

 

She turns to look over one shoulder, and Nathan does everything within his power from commenting on the hopeful look on her face. She can be so transparent, sometimes.

 

She seems to realise herself, and slumps back around again.

 

Awkward.

 

“I just needed to tell somebody, to get it out of my head.” She turns that threatening look on him again, for good measure, and he almost forgets how gentle her voice had sounded before. “And if this gets out, I know where you live, Nathan Prescott.”

 

“Babe, I’m shaking in my boots.”

 

Changing tactics, Victoria pouts at him until he sighs and offers his pinky finger. Victoria does not hesitate to wrap her own around it, and Nathan raises his eyebrows at her. _There, you happy?_ The look on her face says _not entirely, no_ , but she settles down again after that.

 

“Sorry about your hotdog,” she says after a moment.

 

Nathan just shrugs. He’s used to there being casualties when Victoria’s as worked up as she’d been.

 

“You’ll buy me another.”

 

But, for now, he leans into her shoulder and checks his blog again.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright, that's probably the last one for the night. Quick and painless? 
> 
> Thank you for all the comments and kudos so far, though. Really appreciating it. <3


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quick note: I have no intention of bringing Jeffershit's name into this fic. Instead, you'll notice Mx. Dog, the wonderful nonbinary creation of the Love is Strange team. They belong _entirely_ to this incredible team of Devs. 
> 
> I'm sure you're all well familiar with Love is Strange, but if not, [treat yourself](http://loveisstrange-vn.tumblr.com/downloads). You deserve it!

Max arrives early for her Photography class.

 

It’s not that she’d ran there, exactly, but she’s never had much enthusiasm when it comes to sticking around in the Math Lab for longer than what’s absolutely required of her. She’s not the first to arrive, is surprising, until she realises that it’s Kate Marsh in her window seat, head propped up on one hand and yawning.

 

Max smiles at her as she dumps her bag on her desk. “Late night?”

 

“Oh, hi, Max.” Kate rubs her eyes and straightens, trying to wake herself up. “No, I just… didn’t get much sleep over the weekend.”

 

“Oh, is everything okay?”

 

Kate’s smile is unconvincing, if sheepish.

 

“Noisy neighbours,” is all she says, and Max’s throat sticks closed when she swallows.

 

“Anything interesting, at least?” she asks, and tries not to look too obvious. She falls into her seat and uses her bag as a distraction for her hands. She’s almost emptied its entire contents on her desk, unnecessarily, by the time Kate works up the nerve to speak again.

 

“Nothing I’d want to burden you with.”

 

She looks stone-faced and haunted when Max looks up, but that… is probably a good sign? Victoria must have been too loud that night, but it’s reassuring to know that she’s not much of a screamer. It’s more of a relief to know that Kate is Victoria’s neighbour. Rumour travels quicker than lice through the girls’ dorms, and Max can’t see Kate being the instigator of this one.

 

(All too late, she wonders what Brooke had heard that night, and the hairs at the back of her neck stand on end.)

 

They sit in quiet, after that, but it’s a comfortable quiet.

 

Max makes a list of songs at the back of her journal, unrelated to everything, ever.

 

  1. Keaton Henson – Metaphors
  2. alt-J – Lovely Day
  3. Lucia Iman – Dreaming…



 

(Seriously, unrelated. To anything. Ever.)

 

(It’s not like she and Victoria could become… something. Friends, maybe, if they got past the insecurities and similarities. Amiable rivals, if nothing else, although Max likes to think there’s more in them than that. Victoria isn’t gentler with her, per se, but she’s also been holding back on the bitchy comments lately. Max wonders if this entire debacle will change that.)

 

(She hopes not. She just _hopes_ , when she lets herself, unguarded.)

 

The class fills up before 14:30, although ‘fills’ maybe isn’t the word for it.

 

Victoria enters with Taylor, and Mx. Dog not far behind them.

 

They don’t make eye contact.

 

Max holds her breath and feels every muscle in her neck solidify with the effort not to stare. Today, Victoria is bare-legged in burgundy shorts and a cream button-up wisp of a shirt. Max, feeling the heat of the room pressing in on her, can understand why she’d forgone her usual pair of tights.

 

In the corner of her peripheral, Victoria pulls her chair out and pirouettes into her seat with that natural bouncy energy that surrounds her when she’s in a good mood. Her body is lithe and graceful in a way that Max’s isn’t – in a way that draws her eye, naturally, and yet—

 

When she angles her body towards Max and realises the entire effect had been missed, she deflates.

 

Ego? Wounded.

 

Victoria unlocks her phone with one fingertip and pretends to have better things to do with her time. She one-hand texts Nathan reminding him to take his meds, then refreshes Pinterest to see how much her follower count has increased by in the last eighteen minutes. She’s composed and quiet, and will stay like that for the remainder of the lesson.

 

One table down, Max swallows audibly.

 

She’ll allow herself three seconds, no longer, to gawp at Victoria’s ridiculous legs. Max imagines she was a giraffe of a child, leering over every other kid in her class. Even then she’d have people looking up to her.

 

Victoria’s legs are the kind of pale that would more likely burn in the sun than tan, yet she shows them unabashedly. They’re long and slender, the kind of legs a writer would romanticise, or a starving artist – someone unused to rigorous physical activity or spending too much time outdoors. Max wagers she could probably carry Victoria on her back up their entire dorms’ stairs and the only issue would be getting Victoria to agree to it in the first place.

 

Right. Her three seconds are up.

 

Max forces her gaze straight ahead. She’s going to give her shoulder muscles a knot the size of China if she keeps up this posture, but it’s the only thing stopping her from being Bisexual and Suffering.

 

Mx. Dog continues their lesson, oblivious, and like that the hour and a half continues to the bell.

 

 

 

There’s nothing unusual about Max and Victoria being the last to leave.

 

By now, people have stopped questioning it.

 

Kate smiles at Max in a way that says she wouldn't mind seeing her again later, but it's cool if not, no pressure. Taylor tells Victoria she’ll catch her later, nose-deep in her phone. At the front of the room, Mx. Dog appraises Hayden’s latest masterpieces. Max overhears the word _bokeh_ three times in the same sentence, and has flashbacks to her Facebook feed at the New Year.

 

Everyone’s an amateur photographer when fireworks are involved.

 

She’s brought out of her bitching by the unsubtle clearing of a throat. Max would look up, but a soft bare thigh is pressed against her desk, and she’s close enough to see a freckle peeking out from the hem of high-waisted shorts. She stares for too long, probably, and then meets Victoria’s gaze.

 

She’s expecting— more. Victoria looks uneasy. Expectant.

 

“So…” Max clears her throat, and Victoria sighs as though she’s not the one who’s brought herself over here to have this conversation.

 

“Don’t have a fucking nosebleed, Max, I come in peace.” Max looks sceptical, but it’s at the reference, mostly. Victoria pins her with a look that tells her she should be able to divine what she’s about to say next. “Have you spoken to Kate or what.”

 

“Um.”

 

‘Or what’ probably covers the situation better, but Max is becoming eerily proficient at reading Victoria’s anxiety.

 

“She doesn’t know it was me,” she tells her, with more confidence than she actually has in that truth. “You were loud enough to freak her out, alright, but she has no idea who you were with.” She can’t help the self-satisfaction in her tone – current company brings it out in her – and Victoria scoffs at the idea.

 

“So? I’m always obnoxious, don’t think you did anything special.”

 

“Mainly, I’m just glad that you _didn’t_ ,” Max says without thinking. “Kate has no idea that I was anywhere near you that night.”

 

Victoria’s mouth gapes for a full three seconds before she bites her jaw closed again.

 

(Max hears it snap and winces in sympathy.)

 

She has no fucking idea where that just came from, and even opens her mouth to apologise on instinct, but stops herself. Victoria is flushed – _seething_ – and looking at Max like she might slap her, like she might punish her or kiss her, or maybe they’re one in the same. Max turns… suddenly lightheaded.

 

An outraged huff, and Victoria wills the pink out of her cheeks.

 

“Well, _good_.” She can do better than that, but not yet. She struggles for words. “It’s not like anybody would believe that you could actually score with somebody like me. And for the record, Max, you weren’t that remarkable yourself.” She tugs the strap of her bag higher up her shoulder and crosses her arms. “I barely remember a thing.”

 

Victoria leaves quickly, as though she’d won that argument by default simply by having the last word.

 

Was it an argument, exactly?

 

Max can’t tell. She’s flushed, her heart palpitates and her palms are wet with sweat. Her body’s natural defence against _flirtation_.

 

She packs the rest of her things away feeling distant and dizzy.

 

 

 

“Ready for the mosh pit, _shaka braaaah_?”

 

Max shoots a look around the crowded carpark and tries not to wince at the number of eyes trained on her. She shoots Chloe a glare that she doesn’t really feel. “Right. I get it, okay? And I’ve suffered enough.” She pulls the door to the truck open and falls heavily inside. “You really don’t need to embarrass me like this in front of my entire school.”

 

Chloe pinches her cheek as she peels out of the carpark. “Embarrass you? But that’s my life goal.”

 

“Ugh. Yes, mom.”

 

Chloe gasps, offended, and she really should keep both hands on the wheel.

 

“ _Maxine!_ ”

 

They’re halfway into the centre of town before Max thinks to ask where they’re going, and then decides against it. Chloe’s driving with focus; the look of concentration on her face is something Max has come to associate with ‘I need food and I know where to get it’. Chloe’s always had a one-track-mind when it comes to her next meal.

 

“So, _squirt_ ,” Chloe eventually says over the music. The Two Whales comes into view up ahead, and Max's stomach rumbles. “You do anything fun this weekend, aside from cramping your fingers on the ‘motherlode’ workout?”

 

Max turns to watch buildings disappear from the passenger’s side window.

 

“I slept with Victoria.”

 

Silence.

 

Chloe pulls into the Whales’ parking lot and looks relieved to cut the engine.

 

“Say what?”

 

Max turns to her with feigned surprise. _Oh, you haven’t heard?_ “Yeah,” she says, no big deal, and opens the passenger's side door. “I ran into her on Friday night and… Well.” She slips out of the truck with a shrug. Chloe shouts her name as the door closes behind her, and then struggles with her own exit.

 

“Max—! Slow the fuck down.” She locks the truck and jogs to meet Max’s pace; one hand on her shoulder stops her before they can enter the diner. “I’m mishearing this, right? Because Victoria—Victoria _Chase_?”

 

“Yes.” Max deadpans. “The one, the only.”

 

“I’m—” Chloe stops to think before she continues. What is she, exactly? “I mean, I’m horrified, and— _proud_ of you?”

 

Max wince-snorts. “Gross.”

 

“Hella gross,” Chloe agrees, and Max shoves her arm. “Hey, now, don’t be getting handsy with me, Victoria doesn’t seem like the kinda girl who likes to share.” Max shoves at her again, but Chloe’s prepared, this time, and easily catches her in a headlock. She shakes her not-gently from side to side and coos. “Look at you, growing up—!”

 

“Oh my _god_ , Chloe.”

 

“The Max Caulfield _I_ knew never would have consorted with the enemy like this.” She holds her back at arms’ length, expression severe. “I want every single sordid detail, you hear me? I’m not letting you leave this diner until I have Icky Vicky’s O-face burned into my brain.”

 

Max groans, giving up the fight for freedom.

 

“Why are you like this?”  

 

Chloe releases her with a good-natured ruffle of her hair and a wink. She’s gracious enough to help Max, stumbling, into the diner.

 

“Mother,” she calls ahead, kicking the door open, “your finest black coffee, please. My best friend just ate her first pussy!”

 

 

 

(Max is probably not going to kill her.)

 

(But she’s _going_ to kill her.)


	5. Chapter 5

It’s difficult to stay annoyed when you have a full stomach.

 

Max stretches her legs out to the horizon, slipping a hand beneath her t-shirt to pop open the button on her jeans. The sun has just begun to touch the water, casting a beam of yellow that wavers and becomes almost indistinguishable where the waves are at their fiercest. Max cranes her neck back to it, breathes in the sea breeze, and smiles.

 

She spares half a thought to her camera in the bag beside her. She could capture this moment with a click, but sunsets aren’t meant to be frozen. They’re meant to be enjoyed when you’re eighteen years old and your best friend is sitting on the back of the bench beside you, smoking hand-rolled cigarettes and tapping her feet along to the tune stuck in her head.

 

(Does she dare disturb the universe? …not today, anyway.)  

 

The sun is half obscured by the time either of them speak again.

 

“I don’t think that was it at all,” Max says, slipping both hands into her jacket pockets.

 

Chloe takes a drag from her cigarette and tries to remember what they’d been talking about. She feigns an indistinct noise and lets Max read what she needs into it.

 

“It came out of nowhere,” Max continues to explain. “It wasn’t like she’d planned it, and I hadn’t… I’ve never even thought of her like that.” Her cheeks warm and she can’t hide them from Chloe while she has this kind of height advantage. “It was total coincidence that I ran into her that night.”

 

“Do you regret it?”

 

Max turns away from the sunset to see her. Her face is lit half-and-half, one eye the colour of sun-touched sea, the other dark with a blown pupil. She frowns like she doesn’t know how to answer, but maybe that’s not it at all.

 

“No,” she says, and watches Chloe stub the cigarette out on the bench seat by her foot. “I’m not sure how to feel about it right now, but I don’t regret it.”

 

Chloe hums again, rooting around in one pocket for some gum. She finds the packet and offers Max one before she pops two past her lips. “Does she?”

 

“How am I supposed to know that?”

 

Her phone vibrates against her thigh. Chloe snorts and says, “I thought she’d make it pretty fucking obvious, honestly.”

 

The new text flashes on the screen before Max even unlocks her phone, and her stomach drops. Unknown number. ‘ _Max’_ , it says, and that’s it. She watches her screen for a moment longer, until it dims and she has to touch a thumb to it to light it back up again, but nothing else comes through. It’s cryptic enough to make her sit up straighter on the bench.

 

“Victoria’s not exactly an easy person to read,” she says, distracted.

 

‘ _Is this my conscience?_ ’ she types back and hits send. When in doubt, make a joke. It’s carried her this far.

 

“True, that.” Chloe pushes off the bench to stretch her legs. She flicks her cigarette butt out over the cliff with more physical exertion than she’s shown all day, and punches the air when it’s picked up by the wind and carried out to sea.

 

“Are you ready to go?”

 

Max stares at her phone for a moment longer – no reply – and then pockets it. This is something she can think about later. Or, never, preferably. She smiles up at Chloe and stands to fasten the button in her jeans. Chloe chokes when she catches her, and gives her a shove towards the path leading down from the lighthouse.

 

“Come on, I’ll race you,” she says, in her ear one minute and half-way down the trail in the next. “You can work off all those burgers!”

 

“You have an unfair height advantage,” Max yells after her, but takes off running, too.

 

 

 

 

The nail polish is beginning to sting Victoria’s eyes.

 

She wiggles her toes, blowing across them to help them dry, and checks each nail for flaws with a critical eye. Satisfied, she screws the lid onto her bottle of _peachy keen_ and has to stop herself mid-way from checking her phone.

 

Max’s stupid reply is still showing on her lock screen, where she’d read it too quickly and almost instantly regretted sending the text in the first place. _Idiot_ , she thinks, glaring at the screen.

 

“You never told me you’d mastered the art of telepathy,” Nathan says from the top of her bed. He’s leaning back into her pillows with his laptop on his thighs, legs crossed at the ankle and the recently applied red polish drying on his own toe nails. “I thought we told each other everything?”

 

Victoria stares. “What?”

 

With a sigh, Nathan lowers his laptop screen to gesture to her phone with a nod of his head. “You’re gonna have to answer her at some point,” he says, and Victoria’s scowl returns.

 

“Who says I do?”

 

“Oh, girl…” He returns to his laptop as though already bored by the pretence.

 

Offended, Victoria flops down on her back. She lets the conversation drop and decides to stew, instead. At the top of the bed, Nathan mutters something beneath his breath that sounds a lot like, _echeveria lola, you thirsty bitch_. Victoria curls onto her side to see him.

 

“What should I say?”

 

“About what?”

 

“ _To Max_. I mean, it’s not like we speak unless we really need to. She won’t be expecting me to text her.”

 

“Yeah,” Nathan agrees. “So just don’t text her back, and she’ll think she has a stalker.”

 

“Asshole, I’m asking for your help.” Victoria slaps his leg for emphasis. “Put your dick away and pay attention to me.”

 

Nathan exits out of _Viridi_ with a sigh. He lowers the laptop screen with enough force to leave Victoria in no doubt that he could replace it out of his pocket money, and shoots her a look as though to say, _there. Now what?_ Seeing his frown, Victoria pouts.

 

“What’s wrong, boo?”

 

“This must come as a huge surprise,” Victoria tells him, “but I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing when it comes to girls.”

 

“I love that you’re coming to _me_ with this problem,” Nathan snorts, but Victoria's frown sobers him some. “Okay, okay, you’re useless and gay. Luckily for you, I relate and have words of wisdom.” He pats the bed beside him until Victoria crawls up it and flops into place against his side. Nathan grabs her phone for her, handing it over for her to unlock.

 

She opens Max’s text on instinct.

 

“Start small,” Nathan tells her. “She made a joke, maybe make one back.”

 

“I can’t do that.” Her palms are already beginning to sweat. “Something smaller.”

 

“Right,” Nathan sighs, looking at her dubiously. “Say hello?”

 

Victoria whines low in her throat.

 

“Why are you so nervous? You already know she likes girls.”

 

“Wow, you’re right. As a lesbian, I wanna be in a relationship with every girl I see! Thanks, Nate. Problem solved.”

 

“Did sarcasm get you in Caulfield’s panties? No?” Victoria scoffs again, and Nathan lets it drop. “As I was saying, she likes girls, she clearly is at least physically attracted to you.” He doesn’t let Victoria interrupt. “Yeah, we’ve all gotten wasted and sucked dick that we probably shouldn’t have sucked, but it’s a dick that we’ve _thought_ about sucking while sober. Anyone who says otherwise is lying.”

 

“You’re so smart,” Victoria whispers under her breath, and Nathan nods in agreement.

 

“Chances are, Max probably can’t believe how lucky she got. She’d be stupid to turn you down.”

 

“Is this the part where you tell me if you liked girls, you’d totally bone me?”

 

Nathan laughs a little too loudly. Victoria doesn’t press him for an answer.

 

“Just remember that you’re a bad bitch and your life won’t fall apart if Max Caulfield rejects you.”

 

 _It might_ , Victoria wants to argue, but Nathan is giving her that look again. Sometimes she wonders what it would be like if he wasn’t this supportive and would just let her avoid this entire situation. It’d probably be better for her anxiety.

 

She unlocks her phone again, finding Max’s text.

 

_I’m a bad bitch and my life won’t fall apart if Max Caulfield rejects me._

 

‘ _It’s Victoria,_ ’ she types. ‘ _Want 2 meet up?_ ’

 


	6. Chapter 6

Max checks and re-checks her phone.

 

Her palms are sweating. Her heart is beating like the moment a rollercoaster stops on the precipice of a drop, letting you see the ground before you plunge towards it. She swipes her hands across her thighs and tries not to look so obviously like she’s been stood up.

 

It’s not that exactly, though. This isn’t a date.

 

(Her throat bobs. Her mouth is too dry. She takes another sip of milkshake.)

 

Victoria’s running late, and Victoria is never late. Max can imagine that something else has come up – something more important, something serious, something that sounds better than milkshakes at The Two Whales with the photography nerd you accidentally slept with the previous weekend. Anything could fit that last category, but.

 

Victoria had _asked_ _her_ to come here, and Max has enough self-righteous teenage angst in her to really hold a grudge if Victoria stands her up.

 

(Well, probably. She’ll try. She thinks she’ll manage, for Victoria.)

 

It won’t be an absolute disaster if she doesn’t show up, though; Max has work to do, and her journal to fill in, and Joyce makes the best milkshakes this side of the closest city centre. She’s never exactly struggled to enjoy her own company before.

 

So, she tells herself it won’t matter if Victoria shows or not, she doesn’t care, and draws a rabbit in the condensation collecting on her glass.

 

That’s how Victoria finds her.

 

It’s not her first time inside The Two Whales, but it’s been a while since Victoria’s been here. Nothing prepares her for the heat or the stink of grease. It’s really not her scene. It’s loud, the truckers make her uncomfortable when she catches them staring, and most importantly she tries to avoid being inside a ten-mile radius of Chloe Price, if she can help it.

 

Price isn’t here today, though. Just Max and her angry eyes and half a milkshake that looks mainly melted by now.

 

Victoria closes and uncloses her fingers around her bag strap, then forces herself further into the diner.

 

By the time Max sees her, her back has straightened, her shoulders are relaxed, her expression is unaffected. She slips into the bench opposite Max like she isn’t almost twenty minutes late, and plucks a sticky menu from between the salt and pepper shakers.

 

“Hey.”

 

Max blinks.

 

“Um, hi?”

 

Victoria doesn’t raise the issue with her being late, and so Max lets it drop, too. She watches quietly as Victoria orders a drink – coffee, white, no sugar. Not what Max is expecting, though she doesn’t comment on it, only sips at her milkshake and smiles at Joyce as she makes her retreat.

 

“So,” Victoria says, tucking a too-small strand of hair behind her ear. Max stares at her, straw caught between her lips. The set makes them look fuller, poutier, and it surprises Victoria enough to turn her head away when she realises that she’d been staring.

 

“Did you get here okay?” Max asks, stirring the dregs of her shake with the straw.

 

“Yes,” Victoria tells the jukebox. What the hell are they playing in here, anyway? “Do you need to eat?”

 

“No, I photosynthesise, what about you?”

 

“What?”

 

Max’s lips quirk. “Joke,” she says, bobbing her head. “Bad joke?”

 

“Right.”

 

(Tough crowd.)

 

“I didn’t think we were eating, so I kinda grabbed something before I came. But you can order food if you want it?”

 

“I don’t,” Victoria says, although she turns to peruse the menu above the counter. Max turns, as well, and notices the small audience they’ve made of Joyce, whose smile is all too knowing when she meets Max’s gaze. Her face turns pink before she can think about it, and Victoria seems to notice as easily as if she’d read her mind.

 

“Actually, I think I’ll ask for that coffee to go. Did you bring your camera with you?”

 

“I— yeah?”

 

“Then let’s go for a walk,” Victoria tells her, slipping out of the booth.

 

 

 

Max doesn't remove her camera from her bag once. 

 

The weather isn’t exactly hot this time of year.

 

They’re in the lull of lukewarm weather where you’re just as likely to see shorts as you are scarves. It’s windier at the beach, though, the sea air sweeping in from somewhere cooler. Max fairs the worst until they begin walking into the wind, and it blows her hair back out of her face again, granting her sight.

 

Victoria is quiet beside her. She walks too quickly, coffee cup in both hands held beneath her chin, and only looks to Max when she realises how far she’s fallen behind. She slows her pace, after that, and Max lets herself relax.

 

Her sneakers sink into the sand with each step, the tug-and-draw of all those little grains unsteady beneath her giving each footstep a slight delay. She’ll have sand in her socks by the time she gets back to her room; Victoria, in her lace-up dollies, hardly seems to notice.

 

“Was there a reason why you asked me out here?” Max asks, finally.

 

The question had been building in her chest like the components of a bomb, waiting to set her off. She thought she’d be more nervous to actually lend it voice, but there’s something about the setting, maybe, or the milkshake soft in her belly, that brings her to ease as she turns towards Victoria for an answer.

 

She can tell, instantly, that the coffee and the sea aren’t having the same effect on Victoria.

 

Her shoulders hunch more than the wind is calling for. She squints, sips her coffee, does not meet Max’s gaze. Until she does, and her brown eyes are wide and uncertain, and then steady, masked, thoughtful. She appraises Max.

 

“I wanted to hang out,” with a shrug.

 

She’s not lying, but.

 

“We never hang out.”

 

“Maybe I thought we should start,” Victoria shrugs. _Gees_.

 

Max turns her dissatisfaction out towards the sea. The wind picks up her hair again, gives a half-hearted tug across her mouth, draws a sheen to her eyes. Her lashes are dark and full against her cheeks; Victoria’s breath gets lost somewhere inside her chest.

 

“I’ve been a bitch,” she says, letting the wind draw the words out of her, carry them away. “I am a bitch, I mean. To most people – to you. It’s not even that I don’t like you, I’m just…” She wets her lips. Max wants to urge her on, but she doesn’t. “The truth is, Max, I’m… _jealous_ of you.”

 

She steals a glance at Max for her reaction, and flushes when Max’s stare is blank, open, expectant.

 

“You make everything look easy. You don’t give a shit what people think of you. And you’re a fucking good photographer, even with a shitty old polaroid.”

 

_Thank you…?_

 

“I mean,” Victoria stammers, reeling herself in. Her ears are pink from the wind and her blush. “You’re like the exact opposite of me in almost every way. Which isn’t a bad thing, it’s just that I’ve always had this idea in my head of what I had to do, or what I had to be like, to be successful. I work fucking hard for it, you know?

 

“And then you come along, and you make it look effortless, and I know it’s probably not,” she turns to Max quickly, checking for offence. Max’s face is void of almost anything, but that’s a good sign. She isn’t frowning. “You do really well, just as you are, and it’s… kind of a kick in the face after all the effort I put in.”

 

She’s finished, is what Max gathers from the resulting pause. They keep on walking until they reach the far path leading up from the beach, and Max stops them there, with the sea lapping in the distance.

 

“I get it,” she says. “I think.”

 

She turns towards Victoria, sees her eyes wide, nervous. She’s let her coffee cool, but her hands still grasp at it as though it’s giving off heat.

 

“But you can’t compare yourself to me. Or to anyone.”

 

Victoria rolls her eyes, but it’s… self-deprecating, if anything. “I know that. Doesn’t mean it’s easy, though.”

 

“Sure,” Max agrees, lips quirking. “But your effort and my effort look completely different. Same with anyone. Comparing them is only going to make you feel like shit.”

 

“And that concludes this therapy session,” Victoria sighs, and Max walks with her towards the nearest trash can, where she dumps her coffee. Her expression is softer when she turns back around. “So… do you want to do this again?”

 

“What, go for a long walk on the beach and talk about our feelings?”

 

“God, no.”

 

“I don’t know,” Max says, and Victoria can’t tell if she’s being serious. “I mean, this still came out of nowhere. Or… not out of nowhere. It came from… you know.” She waves a hand, and Victoria does know. She swallows thickly.

 

“I guess it did,” she agrees. Her cheeks are pink again. “So?”

 

“Is that what this is about?”

 

Max is squinting; she looks uncertain, nervous. Victoria isn’t sure what she wants to hear.

 

“I… think so?”

 

A non-committal noise.

 

Shit.

 

“Do you want to do it again?” Max asks.

 

Victoria’s heart stops in her chest. Max is as red in the face as she feels.

 

“Do _you_ want that?”

 

Max shrugs.

 

She does. They do.

 

“We _were_ pretty good at it,” Victoria says, and Max nods her agreement.

 

“We should probably talk about it, first…”

 

_But not here_ , Victoria reads into that.

 

“Yeah,” she agrees. More quiet. Seagulls fight over a scrap of food in the distance. “Did you get the bus out here?”

 

“Yep.”

 

“Come on,” Victoria tells her, setting off in the direction they’d come from. “I’ll give you a ride back.”


	7. Chapter 7

Sky sea-spring blue. Ceiling partially flaking in one corner.

 

The alarm clock over-loud, tick-tick-ticking down; her palms sweating.

 

These are the only things Max allows herself to acknowledge this far into the quiet.

 

Finally, Victoria removes both hands from her face and turns to her. Max lets her neck relax from straining to see out of the window behind their heads. Her eyes swim in their sockets like there’s miles and miles of choppy waters between where she lies in Victoria’s bed, and where Victoria attempts to unwind each stiff muscle from their previous coils.

 

“It’s not working.”

 

Victoria sounds petulant. She’d thought it would.

 

She’d _really_ wanted it to.

 

“Maybe we weren’t doing it right,” Max tries, because even in this situation, even here, even when Victoria turns _that stare_ on her, she’d rather say something than nothing. Rather try to minimise the damage even as it’s snowballing into something worse.

 

(Into complete and utter mortification. She’s choking. Victoria looks like she’d like to choke her, too.)

 

(Max thinks, in any other situation, she’d be kind of okay with that…)

 

“We did everything the same,” she argues back, but it’s an argument for the sake of arguing. She doesn’t want to prove Max right even if she might be, even if she is. She pushes her hair out of her eyes and then tries to fix it back into place. “Maybe we just need to be hammered, first.”

 

“I… kinda want to remember it, this time.”

 

“Mm.”

 

Max turns onto her side, head propped up in one hand. She opens her mouth to speak and Victoria rolls out of bed. Max lets her mouth close again, preoccupied by the moles on Victoria’s back and how she’s never noticed them before.

 

“Whatever,” Victoria sighs. She pulls her panties on, still sitting, and then leaves the bed completely. She looks only vaguely frustrated to find Max unmoved as she’s tucking her blouse back into her skirt. “Are you just going to lie there?”

 

“Maybe,” Max shrugs, rubbing her sticky index finger against her thumb, expression vacant. Victoria splutters and throws a t-shirt at her head. Relenting, Max pulls the shirt on and sits to tousle out her hair. “Mario Karts?”

 

Victoria eyes her Wii with uncertainty.

 

“Battle or Grand Prix?”

 

“Grand Prix.”

 

“…fine.”

 

 

 

 

 

Max lies awake at night, thinking.

 

If she falls asleep now, her phone screen tells her, then she’ll have exactly six hours and sixteen minutes of sleep before her alarm goes off. Which is reasonable. She’s performed basic human functions on less.

 

Against better judgement, she replays the events of the day over in her mind.

 

Max has never considered herself sexy before. She’s too young for it, probably. She’s too awkward for it, definitely. She can’t imagine that her skinny hips and dark circles would ever appeal to somebody the way that Victoria’s height, and posture, and _I Could End You with Two Fingers_ face appeal to her.

 

(Maybe her appearance isn’t the problem here. Maybe she’s just weird.)

 

Still.

 

She pulls the covers up to peek down at her breasts. They look… disappointingly flat in this position. Maybe if she rolls onto one side?

 

Her phone buzzes with a text before she can test the theory, and in the blinding light of her deer-in-a-forest screensaver, she reads Victoria’s name above a meagre, if tentative, ‘ _Hey_.’

 

Max thinks of her reply for five full seconds before hitting send. She doesn’t want to seem desperate.

 

‘ _yo_ ’

 

Victoria’s reply comes almost three minutes later. She’s definitely perfected the art of Treat Em Mean. Max… didn’t really need this one example to prove that.

 

‘ _Can’t sleep. Why are u awake_.’

 

Um.

 

‘ _just thinking about things. what's up?_ ’

 

‘ _Do you find me attractive?_ ’

 

_Um_.

 

The ellipses icon appears at the bottom of the chat; Max waits for Victoria’s reply to come through for a solid minute before the icon disappears again. No new text arrives. Max waits a minute longer, just in case.

 

‘ _yeah?_ ’

 

‘ _WOW. THNX_.’

 

‘ _i mean_ _it’d be pretty weird if i didn’t, considering……?_ ’

 

‘ _Ugh_.’

 

‘ _why’d you ask if you don’t believe me :’( ???’_

 

‘ _I do._ ’ Because, duh? ‘ _What are u doing right now._ ’

 

Max looks around her bedroom.

 

‘ _i’m literally just in bed lol_ ’

 

Victoria’s reply comes through… worryingly late.

 

‘ _Are u thinking about me?_ ’

 

Well, Max thinks, this is the turn that their conversation has taken, so?

 

‘ _yeah’_

 

‘ _About what exactly?_ ’

 

‘ _about us i guess_ ’

 

‘ _Mm, me too_.’

 

Mainly, Max wants to know if there’s a future here, romantically or platonically. She’s never been this intimate with a single other person in her life before, and it’s more than a little anxiety-inducing that she isn’t sure if Victoria even… wants to be her friend, never mind more?

 

She can stay up all night talking to Chloe about the most personal shit happening in her life right now, but this is different. This is naked different. It makes her feel uncertain, vulnerable, to know that there’s somebody out there who knows parts of her better than her best friend does, while barely knowing her at all, if they’re being honest.

 

‘ _I can’t stop thinking about u Max. Are u touching urself?_ ’

 

Max reads and re-reads.

 

She briefly considers turning her phone off and quitting school.

 

‘ _are we sexting?_ ’

 

‘…………. _ffs Max?_ ’

 

_Oh_.

 

‘ _sorry? i mean we still can if you want?_ ’

 

Horrified, she wonders what she’s supposed to call Victoria’s vagina in this. Pussy? The C-word? Troubling.

 

‘ _I’m not talking to u ever again_.’

 

‘ _ever ever?_ ’

 

‘…’

 

‘ _not even in class?_ ’

 

‘ _Go to sleep Max_.’

 

‘ _night night’_

‘ _Xxxxxx_ ’

 

If she falls asleep now, her phone screen tells her, she’ll have exactly five hours and fifty-eight minutes of sleep before her alarm goes off…


	8. Chapter 8

Love-making isn’t a term that Max uses lightly.

 

When she slips a finger into Victoria and feels her reaction from the inside out, it is the closest thing to rapture that she’s ever likely to experience. Victoria is clenching and bowed-back and the light sheen of sweat that’s beginning to appear over her collarbones.

 

(In her dreams, Max is a proficient lover. )

 

Victoria gasps and croons and cries against Max’s throat, overwhelmed with pleasure. Her body is burning, is liquid and living, writhing beneath Max like a wave that had looked unassuming from a distance, but now threatens the cliffs that contain it. It’s all Max can do to keep a hold of her, to keep herself from drowning in her.

 

 

She climaxes against Victoria’s thigh and the rush of it wakes her before her alarm.

 

 

It’s early.

 

It’s too early, and her eyes hurt, and her head hurts.

 

She rolls onto her stomach and shoves a hand beneath her waistband, muffling her face in the pillow.

 

 

 

“On a scale of 1 – 10, 10 being you’re already wet from this conversation, how good does my ass look in these shorts?”

 

Max props her head up and stares. It’s… a real nice ass, actually.

 

“Like, a solid 8.5, at least. Wait, do a full turn.”

 

Chloe obliges, pulling her _draw me like one of your French girls, Jack_ face over her shoulder.

 

“Nope, it’s a 9, it’s _definitely_ a 9.”

 

It’s almost four a.m. and the sugar rush from drinking two litres of coke in as many hours is beginning to wear off. Her heart is still palpitating inside her chest. Max thinks this is what it must feel like when you know you’re about to die, like when you’re disassociating out of a panic attack. She always feels a little like she’s floating just above her body, watching herself flounder through awkward conversations.

 

Chloe’s spin ends with her throwing herself down, back-first, on the bed beside Max.

 

She’s too dizzy and she’s too high. She curls a fist in her own hair and draws her head back, back, until she strains at the neck.

 

“I miss Rachel…”

 

Max turns to face her. Chloe always looks a little sad, these days. Sad and angry. It’s more than just the hair dye and the tattoos and the wardrobe; it’s like a wall around her, an aura if Max believed in those. You recognise it like you taste salt in your mouth just by looking at the sea.

 

“When do you guys next meet up?”

 

“Like, I don’t know? Her schedule’s whack right now. Which is good, you know— I’m so proud of her.”

 

Max senses a ‘but’ coming.

 

“But I’m so _sick_ of phone sex.”

 

“Ugh…”

 

“Like, have you ever just wanted to just… hold someone? Not even in the sexual way, but that’s fine, too. But just lie in bed naked next to her and feel her skin against yours, and feel her breathing against you, and your legs are wrapped up so tight that you’d wake her up if you tried to move? Have you ever wanted to just lie like that all night, not even sleeping because you’re just… so peaceful, already?”

 

Chloe looks to her for an answer, and Max wipes the drool from one corner of her mouth.

 

“I guess,” she croaks.

 

Chloe’s grin turns stupid.

 

“C’mon, Max, it can’t be sweaty strap-on sex _all_ of the time.” She laughs at the feeble dig Max taps her arm with. “Seriously, though,” she says, and blows out a sigh. “I’m so hard right now and she’s all the way in fucking L.A.”

 

“Oh my god,” Max whispers to the ceiling.

 

Chloe muffles a groan with both hands, and then releases seemingly all the tension in her body with a sigh.

 

“Speaking of horny bitches,” she says after a pause, turning to better see Max.

 

Max closes her eyes as though if she can’t see it, this conversation can’t see her, either.

 

“I don’t want to talk about Victoria right now.”

 

“Who said anything about Victoria?”

 

Max peeks with one eye. Max glares with one eye.

 

“Oh, Maximus,” Chloe sighs fondly, ruffling her hair. “You’re in deep shit, huh?”

 

Max _really_ doesn’t want to talk about Victoria right now.

 

(There’s something about four a.m. and the liminal space that is Chloe’s bedroom that makes her sprout her internal monologue as freely as if she’d swallowed a truth serum. There are parts of this _thing_ she’s going through right now that she doesn’t want to acknowledge, that she’d much rather ignore until they just go away.)

 

(When faced with a pretty girl and her feelings, that’s usually not how it works, and yet.)

 

“I’m in deep shit,” she agrees. “Can we leave it at that for tonight?”

 

Chloe snorts and rolls into her side, trapping her own arms beneath her chest. She yawns too loudly directly beside Max’s ear.

 

“As long as you get up to turn the lights out, sure.”

 

 

When the room is dark and quiet, and Chloe is faintly snoring in that heavy-breathing way that she has, Max lies awake until her eyes are so adjusted that she can see every piece of furniture in Chloe’s room, if not clearly.

 

The graffiti on her walls dilutes from defined words to an indistinct scribble. She’s spent enough time in this bedroom that she should have memorised every angry letter of them, and yet. She can imagine Chloe, clear as day, writing the words in. She can imagine exactly what kind of headspace she must have been in to do it, but staring at the shapes in the dark and that is all they are now – just shapes.

 

Max squints and squints to better understand what she’s seeing, and falls asleep before she can.


	9. Chapter 9

Max cloud-watches between periods.

 

The sun is full and partially obstructed by the canopy of a campus tree. Beside her, Victoria stirs a chamomile teabag on a string around her flask while browsing a magazine. Every now and then, Max hears the pages turning and Victoria’s free hand smoothing out a paper wrinkle, but otherwise they’re silent.

 

It’s comfortable.

 

Her legs are bare and burning, and there’s grass in her hair, and her next class isn’t the most enjoyable, but it’s comfortable.

 

(Victoria reaches the _Who Wore It Best_ article and scoffs into her tea.)

 

“Turtle,” Max says, lifting a finger.

 

Victoria squints at the sky. “I don’t see it.”

 

“Right there,” waving her finger, again. “Just its head and a fin, like it’s swimming half-out of the water.”

 

“Turtles don’t swim half-out of the water.”

 

Max shrugs her shoulders, closes her eyes. It’s quiet for a while longer, and there’s no more turning of glossy magazine pages. She wants to open her eyes and check to see if Victoria is watching her, but isn’t sure what she’d say if she was.

 

She wants to turn to Victoria and ask her, how often have you thought of how nice it would be to kiss me? Have you any idea how often I’ve thought of how nice it would be to kiss you again? Why aren’t we doing this – what’s stopping us, how afraid are we of doing it wrong that it’s stopped us from doing it altogether?

 

Max reins her thoughts in like dogs straining at leashes.

 

 _Down, girl!_ Like if she flicks them on the nose hard enough she’ll stop fantasising about holding Victoria’s hand in public.

 

It’s been a tentative few weeks, but Max thinks that they’ve cultivated something of a friendship between them. They don’t talk about that night, but Max can see that Victoria’s thinking about it, sometimes, when her face turns slack and her cheeks turn pink, and she looks at Max with a sense of longing that flusters the both of them into pretending it had never happened.

 

Victoria hasn’t tried to kiss her again, yet, but Max thinks that she wants to.

 

(Max thinks that she wants her to, also.)

 

 

(In times of great peril, Chloe’s wisdom swims to the forefront of Max’s mind, screaming, _gaaaaaaay_.)

 

 

Shaking the grass out of her hair, Max pulls herself up into a sitting position against the bark of the tree. Victoria doesn’t stir, but to take a sip from her flask and turn another page. She wets her lips and Max notices that she’s taken the effort to colour-coordinate her lipstick with her nail polish.

 

“Don’t you have an obnoxious journaling habit to uphold?” Victoria sighs, and Max stops herself from staring.

 

“It can wait.”

 

Victoria’s full attention is apparently on her magazine, but she can’t quite stifle the perceptible curl of her lips. “For something exciting to happen?” As though it were impossible.

 

“Could happen.”

 

Victoria snorts and then remembers that she doesn’t do that. She sniffs delicately to undo it.

 

“Really?” she asks, abandoning the magazine. “When has anything more exciting than a squirrel breaking into the cafeteria happened at Blackwell?”

 

Max will blame this on Victoria, ultimately, because spending so much time with the girl has certain aspects of her personality rubbing off on her.

 

“You mean,” she drawls, eyes boring into Victoria’s, “aside from the morning I woke up naked in your bed, or…?”

 

Victoria colours and holds her breath, as though deciding on how best to react. Anger or embarrassment? After seconds of indecision, she simply turns her pink face back down to her magazine. She’s quiet for a long moment, afterward, and Max almost regrets the comment.

 

“You don’t write about that in your journal, do you.”

 

Max eyes her book bag, as if to skim over the paragraphs that she’s written of Victoria through the soiled canvas.

 

“Because if anyone ever found it,” Victoria continues, and Max can feel her gaze on her, as hard and panicked as her voice. “Max?”

 

“Of course I haven’t.” She rolls her eyes up to the sky, feels rough tree bark in her hair, pressing against her scalp. She can see Victoria in her peripheral, a peachy still shape with dark eyes and a severe mouth. She points a finger at the sky, again, “whale,” but Victoria’s tired of the game.

 

 

 

 

Taylor catches her between periods, a hand at her cardiganed elbow.

 

“So, are you fucking Caulfield, or what?”

 

Victoria stares in horror for three whole seconds, caught somewhere between red and white hot, until Taylor laughs.

 

“JK, JK. But seriously, you guys are like, what, BFFs now? You’re spending all your time with her lately.”

 

“We’re… _friends_.” Victoria tries to make the word sound not-foreign in her mouth, like it’s her first time saying it, like she doesn’t entirely understand what it means. Taylor doesn’t look convinced. “We share the same classes.”

 

“So do we,” Taylor points out.

 

“And look how close we are.”

 

“That’s… kinda my point?”

 

“Why are you even bringing this up?” Victoria asks, rounding on her. “Are you jealous because I have more than one friend here to spend my time with? You’re not my fucking shadow, Taylor, we’re not going to spend every hour of the day together.”

 

Taylor swallows like there’s a knife against her throat. This is a failsafe Victoria leans on too often to not call it a crutch, but whenever something threatens to shake her, to scare her, she goes on the attack. It’s learned behaviour, deep-rooted behaviour.

 

(Others would just call it being a bitch. Victoria would probably agree.)

 

“Okay,” Taylor says, deadpan, because she’s dealt with this before, and because she is not in the mood.

 

“I’m going to ignore whatever that just was and _not_ ask you why you’re major freaking out over me asking you about Max Caulfield.” She holds a hand up to stop Victoria from interrupting. “Seriously? It’s your business, you can fuck who you want, as long as you don’t blow me off to braid each-others’ pubes every weekend, I don’t care.”

 

Victoria chokes, eyes wide and glaring around the corridor for anyone who might have overheard their conversation.

 

When her gaze returns to Taylor, there’s a curious look there.

 

Victoria wants to scream in her face and turn away.

 

“You can talk to me about anything, you know?” Taylor tries, shrugging her shoulders. When she next speaks, it’s in a lowered tone. “You’re the only person who really listens to me when I talk about my mom. I mean, you’re like the only person I even talk to about her, now. Everyone else makes it… awkward.”

 

She taps Victoria’s ribs with her elbow.

 

“Point being, if I can handle the shit I’m going through, I can handle the shit _you’re_  going through, too.”

 

Victoria scoffs, but she’s trying not to smile. Or cry.

 

“You’ve never heard of the straw that broke the camel’s back?”

 

“Nope,” Taylor says honestly, and links their arms, tugging Victoria in the direction of the dorms. “So if you have any buried confessions of love for dorky photography students with a penchant for shit t-shirts, I’m all ears, yeah?”

 

“Shut the fuck up,” Victoria laughs, and her cheeks are as pink as her recently glossed lips.


End file.
